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George Rochberg: Caprice Variations & Violin Sonata

This is an example of a digital release sharing new insights into key repertoire from a significant composer. As a first recording of a significant work, this disc helps to establish the scholarly infrastructure for performance by providing a reference recording that gains additional authority by virtue of being prepared with the composer, George Rochberg.

The researcher plays piano in this recording, which was made live in February 2004, and released by Metier in 2011. Shorr and his long-standing research collaborator Peter Sheppard Skærved worked with Rochberg during a tour of the American eastern seaboard centred on music by the composer, to celebrate his 80th birthday. Rochberg himself considered the Violin Sonata to be a key work in his output: ‘Finally, I was able to realise a lifelong ambition to produce a full-scale violin and piano duo with a complex emotional scenario embracing the intimate and public realms of expression.' The liner notes for this recording explain the intimacy of the working relationship that Shorr and Sheppard Skærved enjoyed with the composer in preparing this performance and realising its complex emotional, technical and stylistic challenges.

The impact of this release is reflected in its being awarded Classical Music editor’s choice in July 2011.